“Who can forget the fatal forties, The rampant firing of mortars, The letters turning faces ashen, Their formal words ‘was killed in action?’ It’s cold. The sky is spreading out, Above the rumbling railroad, tired of moving east with endless crowds, Who lost their homes to bombs and fire.” David Samoilov “THE FORTIES”
Our Russian language lecturer, a Ghanaian (let us call him Dr. O), has a Russian wife, whom he married when he was a student in Moscow. He told us once how romantically humble Russian ladies were. And Sir Elton John romanticised this feminine touch in the 1985 song entitled “Nikita”:
“Hey Nikita is it cold in your little corner of the world you could walk around the globe and never find a warmer soul to know. Oh I saw you by the wall ten of your tin soldiers in a row with eyes that looked like ice on fire. The human heart a captive in the snow…” Nikita (a man’s name) was a short – haired East German female border guard.
(The South African photographer and song-writer, Guy Hobbes, sued Elton John for plagiarising his 1982 song, Natasha. In October 2012, a U.S. Federal court dismissed Guy Hobbes suit, claiming Elton John had not infringed Guy Hobbies’ copyright).
You may recall how Russia was leading East Germany and other “Communist” countries (embellished as “socialist”) or “capitalist.” Russia was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which included Belorussia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia – and these five countries were set free to be independent after glasnost (openness) Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev of Russian and Ukrainian parentage wearing them from the Marxist – Leninist governance.
On the Christmas of 1991, Gorbachev announced; “We’re now living in a new world.” With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Cold War (United States of America versus the Soviet Union) ended.
Gorbachev remarked at the first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine: “…even more than my launch of perestroika Chernobyl was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union….”
Gorbachev had noted that the U.S. had grown “arrogant and self-confident,” after the collapse of the Soviet Union; He thought NATO was encroaching close to Russia’s borders. He remarked: “How can one count on equal relations with the United States and the West in such a position?” Putin was dismayed at the collapse of the Soviet Union, calling it: “…. the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.” Does he want to have it back?
But has the chemistry of the world remained the same? What was the chemistry of the Cold War times and the chemistry now? Many of us were either not born at the time of the Cuban crisis or were very young to appreciate the dynamics of the times.
You may not have felt the impact of George Orwell’s “1984.” Published in 1949, the dystopian novella, which followed the life of Winston Smith, who got frustrated by the omnipresent eye of the party and the wicked ruler, Big Brother (“Big Brother is watching” everywhere he went or everything he did).
Do we still hold on to the theory that “falsehoods are alternative facts” (untruths and double speak). War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. The Newspeak held on to the theory that, “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
Apologists for Putin’s action are quick to make reference to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. It was a one-month, four-day high profile confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. had deployed missiles in Italy and Turkey, and the Soviet Union in retaliation had sought to deploy similar missiles in Cuba.
There were very tense negotiations and hot-line exchanges. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev at a time of tense Cold War exchanged messages (K Phones K). War was averted: U.S. removed the nuclear missiles out of Italy and Turkey; the Soviets removed the nuclear missiles out of Cuba: It was a quid pro quo.
Putin’s action on Ukraine is true to “conflict theory,” which holds that social order is maintained by domination and power, rather than by consensus and conformity. This had been the argument developed by Karl Marx, who argues the society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources.
Marx theorised about the two primary classes in society: the proletarian working class (the large masses) and the bourgeois ruling class (the small ruling elite). This is buoyed up by the concepts of social inequality, the division of resources and the conflicts that exist among different socio-economic classes.
Conflict theorists will tell you that different methods and procedures exist to address conflict, some of which are negotiation, mediation, arbitration, diplomacy and peace building.
But after the Cold War, questions are thrown up: Do the old theories of conflict still exist? Do the old methods of conflict resolution still work? Can the old and new methods of conflicts resolution exist side by side?
The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, urges Russia to end its “absurd war in Ukraine, insisting that continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical.”
How can anyone justify the bombardment of Mariupol, leaving it as the “ashes of a dead land?” With 10 million Ukrainians fleeing their homes…. the effects: skyrocketing food, energy and fertiliser prices threatening to spiral into a global hunger crisis; dwindling supplies of water and medicine.
“Ukraine is on fire; the country is being decimated before the eyes of the world; the impact on civilians is reaching terrifying proportions; countless innocent people – including women and children – have been killed; after being hit by Russian forces, roads, airports and schools lie in ruins; 24 health facilities have suffered attacks……”
And is it any good news that the Russian tabloid ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’ posts “….9861 Russian soldiers had been killed in action, and another 16,153 had been wounded,” when other news bulletins talk of 15,000 deaths.
Comrade Putin, Kakde la? (How are you?) How is the “special military operation” in Ukraine going? Harasho (good) or plokhoy (bad)?
Have you read about Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Amilcare Mussolini of Italy, and Emperor Showa Hirohito of Japan? Were they not the three Axis Dictators?
“Fair is foul, foul fair” Marcus Antonius says in Julius Caesar, “My hearts is in the coffin there with Caesar…” and our hearts are in the coffin there with the slain women, children, the elderly of Mariupol, Kyiv…and we “must pause” till they come back to us. Dobray Nochee (Good Night).
Africanus Owusu Ansah
africanusowusu1234@gmail.com